Contents

Plot

Set in 1996 or 1997, according to pop culture references, the novel begins in New York City, following a hip, 27-year-old model and nightclub manager Victor Ward, who spends his days and nights organizing parties and worrying whether A-list celebrities will turn up. Eventually he is given a task by a mysterious diplomat named F. Fred Palakon, which involves going to London to search for one of Ward's ex-girlfriends who has gone missing. Things begin to take a worrying turn as Ward gets mixed up with a group of terrorists in Paris.

Whilst the first half primarily introduces the characters and sets the scene, the second-half of Glamorama, when the action shifts from New York to London and then Paris, contains a great deal of extreme violence, in particular two gruesome torture sequences that feature castration and electrocution. There are also many bomb attacks, with detailed descriptions of men, women and children being blown apart, burned alive and mutilated.

The terrorists are supermodels or ex-supermodels of both sexes and though they appear to have a leader it is apparent that they get their orders and their resources from external backers who are never seen. The supermodels are presented as vacuous, arrogant and self-centered, these traits presumably being why they were recruited for terrorism.

To add to the often surreal nature of the second-half of the novel, the motives and ideology of the terrorists are never revealed. There are clues that it relates to the Middle East and that it may be linked to Victor Ward's father, who is a powerful U.S. Senator and is tapped as a Presidential Candidate.

The novel switches back and forth between first-person narration (by Ward) and third-person. A notable literary device employed by Ellis is the interjection of mention of a director and film crew following Ward about, offering him advice on what to say or what emotion to express.

As American Psycho was a satire of capitalism and consumerism, Glamorama is a satire of society's obsession with celebrities and beauty; it features a great deal of violence, black humor and surrealism. One theme is the parallel between the fear of the unlikely, horrible fate of being killed by terrorists and the fear of the extremely likely, rather less horrible fate of being unable to live up to the beauty of professional models. Both fears are fed by the media.

The novel keeps up Ellis's tradition of using characters from previous novels. Lauren Hynde and Bertrand Ripleis both return from The Rules of Attraction to play major roles in the novel. There are cameos by Mitchell Allen, Sean Bateman and Patrick Bateman, some of them only in reference and others where the character is present in the scene. Alison Poole also returns: Ellis first used her in American Psycho, but she originally appeared in Jay McInerney's novel, Story of My Life. Victor Ward himself had a relatively minor role in The Rules of Attraction, in which he was the absentee boyfriend of Lauren Hynde.

Zoolander

Fans have noted similarities to the Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander. Ellis has stated that he is aware of the similarities, and went on to say that he considered and attempted to take legal action.[1]

Ellis was asked about the similarities in a BBC interview.[2] In the response to the question, he said that he is unable to discuss the similarities due to an out-of-court settlement.

Adaptations

In 1999, the contemporary Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero wrote a composition for chamber ensemble entitled Glamorama Spies which was inspired by the novel.

In Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis, the character is constantly spied on and, even before his consciousness becomes aware of it, he is constantly in an anxious state. Anxiolytics and some romantic intervals are not enough to stop the sensation that he is always late for something and that he is progressively losing his sense of reality. I was reading this book when Sentieri Selvaggi asked me for this piece and going from reading to writing seemed almost inevitable. Therefore, if at times you feel some hints at emotion, think about the second to last sentence of the book: "Le stelle sono reali" (the stars are real).[3]

—Lorenzo Ferrero

A movie adaptation is planned but although it was originally scheduled for release in 2004, it has been delayed.

Glitterati is a 2004 film directed by Roger Avary assembled from the 70 hours of video footage shot for the European sequence of The Rules of Attraction. It expands upon the minimally detailed and rapidly recapped story told by Victor Ward, portrayed by Kip Pardue, upon his return to the United States after having travelled extensively around Europe. In regard to expanding upon those events, the film acts as a connecting bridge between The Rules of Attraction and the upcoming film adaptation set to be directed by Avary.[citation needed] Avary has called Glitterati a "pencil sketch of what will ultimately be the oil painting of Glamorama."[citation needed]

In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of Glamorama, narrated by Jonathan Davis, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.

Contents

Sourced

I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than
Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a
huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho
as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in
The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the
amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited.
I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly:
I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a
reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to
the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But
I don’t really mind if they do.

I read it for the first time in about 20 years this
year–-recently. It wasn't so bad. I get it. I get fan mail now from
people who weren't really born yet when the book came out. I don't
think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where
it comes from. I get what it is. I know that sounds so ambiguous.
It's sort of out of my hands and it has its reputation so what can
you do about it? There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more
elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty
good writing for someone who was 19. I was pretty surprised by the
level of writing.

It might be my favorite book of mine. It was a very exciting
time in my life. I was writing that book while I was at college.
Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot
of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun
book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The
stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like
that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual.
It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very
soft spot for.

I reread that book in the summer of '03. . . . And I hadn't
looked at that book either since '91. And I was dreading it. I
thought it was going to be a really terrible novel. Everything
everyone had ever said about it was going to be true. . . . And I
started reading it... and I was surprised. It was good. It was fun.
It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be
when I was writing it. Not nearly as weighted down with the
importance that I thought I was investing it with. I found it
really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot.
The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I
couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had
to steel myself to reread those passages.

It's definitely the book that I can tell—I don't know if other
people can tell but I can tell as a writer–-is probably the most
divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as
it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It
was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed
the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it.

...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to
listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be
like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually
weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was
three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in
bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's
room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was,
she remembers, a Senior or Junior and usually somestimes at her
boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore
Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N.Y.U., a
film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get
Screwed party, or a townie.

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled
in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the
corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be
seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the
traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the
words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables
on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce &
Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the
driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My
Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.

pg. 3; the opening of the book.

"Wait," she gasps.
"What?" I moan, puzzled but almost there.
"Luis is a despicable twit," she gasps, trying to push me out of
her.
"Yes," I say, leaning on top of her, tonguing her ear. "Luis
is a despicable twit. I hate him too," and now, spurred on
by her disgust for her wimp boyfriend, I start moving faster, my
climax approaching.
"No, you idiot," she groans. "I said Is it a receptacle
tip? Not 'Is Luis a despicable twit.' Is it a receptacle
tip? Get off me."
"Is what a what? I moan.
"Pull out," she groans, struggling.
"I'm ignoring you," I say, moving my mouth down on her small
perfect nipples, both of them stiff, sitting on hard, big
tits.
"Pull out, goddamnit!" she screams.
"What do you want, Courtney?" I grunt, slowing my thrusts down
until I finally straighten up and then I'm just kneeling over her,
my cock still half inside. She hunches back against the headboard
and my dick slides out.

pg. 103; Patrick is sleeping with Courtney, the fiancee of his
associate Luis Carruthers, whom he despises and later finds has a
homosexual attraction towards him. The dispute is over what type of
condom he is wearing.

Specks—-specks all over the third panel, see?—-no,
that one—-the second one up from the floor and I wanted to
point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened
and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer's name is—-a
master craftsman not—-mistook me for someone else so I
couldn't register the complaint, but, gentlemen—-and ladies—-there
they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they
don't look accidental but like they were somehow done by a
machine—-so I don't want a lot of description, just the story,
streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and
don't leave out why, though I'm getting the distinct impression by
the looks on your sorry faces that why won't get
answered—-now, come on, goddamnit, what's the story?

"We'll slide down the surface of things..."

"'As a genereal rule you shouldn't expect too much from people
darling,' and then i kiss her on the cheek.

"I hear today's college women are 'prodigious.'"
"Prodigious? Is that what you heard?"
"Well, I read it in a magazine. It was something I wanted to
believe."
"The Jayster. Always a dreamer."

That doesn't sound like...the Jayster.

About
Bret Easton Ellis

A case could be made for Mr. Ellis as a covert moralist and
closet sentimentalist, the best kind, the kind who leaves you space
in which to respond as your predispositions nudge you, whether as a
commissar or hand-wringer or, like me, as an admirer of his
intelligence and craft.